A fresh look at Mars One

December 14, 2014

This week we bring on Bas Lansdorp, Co-Founder and CEO of Mars One to take a fresh look at what they are doing. Interested in more information? You can hit up http://www.mars-one.com for the gameplan or if you want to help out you can donate here: http://www.mars-one.com/donate

In Space News we have: Ariane V launches DirecTV-14 and GSAT-16 China lofts 3 military satellites to “study corp yields” Atlas V launches NROL-35, a classified military satellite Orbital to launch Cygnus atop Atlas V Orion is back on land NASA gets more money Future use of RD-180 engines is now harder Send your own items to the moon via MoonMail.co

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2 Comments

The problem with the SLS is NOT that it doesn’t have a destination. Let’s say that some official came out and said, “OK. Today I determine that the SLS is going to go to EML1 every six months to build up a new ISS and swap out crew”. Will that solve all of SLS’s problems? Not at all. It will still cost $3 billion/year. Year after year after year after year! Leaving no budgetary room for more sustainable approaches. There will be no money available for a lunar lander, or a Mars craft, or, or, or… The fundamental problem with SLS isn’t its mission, it is its cost. This has been the fundamental problem with the Shuttle and the ISS. This is why neither the Shuttle nor the ISS served as stepping stones to the Moon as they were originally intended. There was not enough money left over to go to the Moon.

What this means is that we need a fundamentally different approach. And that approach is already in front of us and has plenty of proof. That is…public-private programs. They are proven to be far more cost-effective than FAR contracting. They have given us the F9, F9 upper stage, Dragon-cargo, Antares, Antares upper stage, Cygnus, ISS cargo resupplies, and soon, Dragon-crew, and CST-100 crew. All for no more than 5% of NASA’s budget.

Whether or not SLS, Orion, and the ISS are continued, what we most need is fully funding the public-private programs and that includes the next logical step which would be LunarCOTS.com. Check it out.